The suspension system plays a crucial role in mitigating vehicle vibration, enhancing passenger comfort, and improving driving handling stability. While many mechanical experimental platforms exist for testing suspension system performance, they often need high costs and precision requirements. In the field of modern industrial product design, hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation has become an invaluable tool.
Electrically interconnected suspension (EIS) is a novel type of interconnected suspension by connecting various suspensions in an electrical way. The novel EIS avoids many drawbacks of traditional interconnected suspensions. The EIS is usually composed of electromagnetic motors and electrical networks (EN). By designing the structure of the EN reasonably, the EIS system can achieve decoupling control in multiple vibration modes.
This paper introduces an HIL experimental platform established for a half-car EIS system based on an NI Compact RIO 9049. The half-car electrically interconnected suspension model runs in the FPGA component, responsible for data collection and actuation control of the EIS. Simultaneously, the real-time component records data and manages the suspension circuit. The hardware of the HIL system comprises a new type of EIS system and corresponding control circuits.
The experimental results highlight the remarkable consistency between the HIL platform and the simulation model in Simulink, demonstrating a simplified and effective approach to experimental system design. Furthermore, the semi-active EIS shows superior vibration control performance compared to the passive EIS suspension, showcasing the benefits of decoupling control.